Josh Boone confirms his X-Men spin-off The New Mutants is a horror movie

Last November, we began to hear some very interesting rumors about director Josh Boone's X-MEN spin-off THE NEW MUTANTS. "Sources close to the project" were saying that Boone would be mixing the X-MEN universe with a completely different genre for this film; they were saying THE NEW MUTANTS would be a "Stephen King meets John Hughes" horror movie.

That rumor has now been confirmed by Boone himself, who told Entertainment Weekly THE NEW MUTANTS will be

a full-fledged horror movie set within the X-Men universe. There are no costumes. There are no supervillains. We’re trying to do something very, very different."

Boone even re-used the "Stephen King meets John Hughes" decription, this time to describe the run of the comic book source material that serves as the primary inspiration for his film. That run began with issue #18 of the Chris Claremont-created NEW MUTANTS comic, which is when artist Bill Sienkiewicz started working on the book and turned it into

a darker and more surreal and impressionistic X-Men series than we'd ever seen before. It felt like Stephen King meets John Hughes."

The director, who has also written the screenplay with Knate Lee, Scott Neustadter, and Michael H. Weber, wouldn't share plot details, so here's where another "source close to the project" stepped in to let EW know what the story is:

Held in a secret facility against their will, five new mutants have to battle the dangers of their powers, as well as the sins of their past. They aren’t out to save the world — they’re just trying to save themselves.

THE NEW MUTANTS is set to start filming in July. So far Maisie Williams (below) and Anya Taylor-Joy (above) have been officially cast as Wolfsbane and Magik, respectively. Boone's THE FAULT IN OUR STARS star Nat Wolff has been mentioned as a contender for the role of Cannonball, while Henry Zaga might be close to being cast as Sunspot. Rosario Dawson may be in talks to join the cast as well.

We can expect to see THE NEW MUTANTS in theatres sometime during spring 2018.